Lectures/Jan 23, 2025

Queer Fragments of Byzantium

Queer Fragments of Byzantium lead image

Queer Fragments of Byzantium, lecture by Roland Betancourt (University of California, Irvine), Simon Fraser University and Zoom, January 31, 2025, 2:30 pm (PST)

Moderator: Dr. Evan Freeman, Assistant Professor, Global Humanities and Hellenic Canadian Congress of BC Chair in Hellenic Studies

In modern art and popular culture, Byzantium is rarely represented and when it is, it appears through cursory allusions. This talk will look at the fragments of Byzantium in modern popular culture to study the ways in which queer artists and authors deployed the period to imagine an alternative to the western Middle Ages.

Roland Betancourt is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art from 2024-2026 and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. He is also Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on the Byzantine Empire, including its art, liturgy, and theology, with an interest in issues of sexuality, gender identity, and race.

Advance registration requested for in-person attendance.

This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).